JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

We might argue that libraries are singularities—so many fictional and non-fictional lives, so many time periods converging on a single point. At the very least, they make excellent settings for stories.

The LitWit Challenge this month, should you choose to accept it, is to write a story of 500 words or more set in a library. Any library, actual or imaginary. It could be a mystery in which the heroine races against time to locate a vital piece of information that would save civilization. It could be a time-travel adventure in which library patrons can enter the worlds described in books. It could be a horror thriller in which library patrons are walled up in the stacks. It could be a romance in which an anonymous admirer leaves love letters spelled out by the spines of old books. It could be Anything.

Post your stories in Comments before Sunday, 20 April 2014. The winner will receive a toy Philippine Eagle and 8 Twisted books signed by the author.

Start writing.

Why do you need copies of Twisted?

(a) Your friend borrowed your copies years ago and never returned them.
(b) You packed them the last time you moved house and now you don’t remember which crate they’re in.
(c) They got Ondoyed/drowned in a flood.
(d) Your ex stole your copies. (It’s his/her/their one redeeming quality.)
(e) Your cats used your books as scratching posts.

(f) Your kids need to submit book reports on Filipino authors.
(g) You were insane enough to propose them as subjects for your thesis.
(h) You are writing a dissertation on World Domination.
(i) You want to reread the essays about Temptation Island, massacre movies, covering books in plastic, Goran Ivanisevic, bra sizes, Pinoy alternative rock, the grunge era, the guy whose nards got stuck in the holes in a monobloc chair, and cats before they took over the Internet.
(j) You want to give them to your friends who moved to the US/Canada/ANZ/Europe/Uranus and left their copies here (The Library of Babel delivers).
(k) You moved to the US/Canada/ANZ/Europe/Uranus and left your copies in the Philippines.
(l) You need unique coasters for your square-bottomed glasses.
(m) You’ve never read them.
(n) You need to get a present for someone at work and she/he seems the type who’d like them.
(o) You need material for a 1994-2007 time capsule.
(p) They’re cheap.
(q) You may be through with the past, but the past isn’t through with you till you get signed copies.

Live at The Library of Babel.

In The Library of Unrequited Love by Sophie Divry (translated from the French by Sian Reynolds) a 60-ish librarian in a provincial town arrives in her basement domain—the Geography section, to which she feels she has been unjustly exiled by the bureaucrats of the public library system—and finds a reader asleep on a chair. He had been locked-in overnight. (A fantasy we had while growing up. We would be trapped in a library after hours and free to read everything we wanted. Then the books would come to life, or ghosts would turn up to do research.)

Read our column at InterAksyon.com.

You can actually see the heat shimmering.

We live in the tropics and are accustomed to high temperatures, but this summer is something else. One minute we’re wearing cardigans and dining outdoors, the next minute we’re sticking our heads in the freezer to make the hell imps stop drilling our brains.

If this isn’t climate change, then we must be living on Dune.

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s adaptation of Dune is one of the greatest What-could’ve-beens in film history. Orson Welles as the Baron Harkonnen! Salvador Dali as the Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV! Charlotte Rampling as Jessica, Gloria Swanson as the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, Alain Delon as Duncan Idaho, and Mick Jagger as Feyd-Rautha, with H.R. Giger and Moebius doing design. The concept alone kills.

As a veteran survivor of heat-induced headaches, here are a few tips on how not to get microwaved this summer.

1. Stay indoors. Darkness is good.
2. Hydrate. Drink twice as much water as usual. (If you’re thirsty, you’re already dehydrated.)
3. Read books set someplace cold. In the fictional universe, Winter is coming. (Watching movies set in the poles is good, too.)

4. Sleep. Cats know.
5. Limit movement.
6. In case of heatstroke, sweat.

Captain America: Winter Soldier Ultimate Collection by Ed Brubaker, Php1175 at National Bookstores

We have never read a Captain America solo comic book, and having been floored by Captain America: The Winter Soldier, we figured that that storyline is a good starting-point. After our second viewing, the movie has pulled alongside The Avengers as the best of the Marvels: it is funny and laden with in-jokes, its action set pieces—especially the hand-to-hand combat—are genuinely thrilling (As the elevator scene demonstrates, moving bodies are more cinematic than CGI explosions), and Steve Rogers’s humanity shines through. We used to wonder why Captain America was the leader of the Avengers—now we understand.

The Library of Unrequited Love by Sophie Divry, Php335 at National.

They had us at the title. How could we possibly resist a book called The Library of Unrequited Love? If we could, the back cover blurb would silence all objections. Translated from French, original title La Cote 400, and very short.

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, Php589 at National.

The Interestings would make a great name for a band. Wolitzer’s novel, one of the best-reviewed in the last year, follows a group of friends from their teens to middle age. We can already imagine the movie and hear its soundtrack.

Wonders never cease. Conventional wisdom says a four-hour arthouse film with neither blockbuster stars nor traditional feelgood storylines will die at the box-office, even if it’s been named one of the best films of the year in the world. Sometimes conventional wisdom needs a good tweaking.

The weekly screenings of Lav Diaz’s Norte, Hangganan Ng Kasaysayan (Norte, The End of History) at the Ayala Cinemas in March were sold out, often days before the actual show. A regular theatrical run would probably not be sustainable: given its length, the film would get only two screenings a day, and nobody wants an empty house on a weekday afternoon (nilalangaw). But special screenings once a week, promoted in the social media and friendly news outlets, championed by reviewers and academics, and fueled by excellent word of mouth—those work.

Photos by Moira Lang

The screening last Monday at Glorietta 4 was sold out on sureseats.com several days earlier, but 50 people still showed up without tickets, in case there were cancellations. Most of them could not be served.

More Norte playdates at Ayala Cinemas will be announced shortly, including a weekend screening. Thank you to Ayala Cinemas for supporting this venture.

Norte opens in the US in June. Watch for the feature on Norte in Artforum this month.